Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 165 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The counts had run the mines collectively until 1536, when Albrecht persuaded the others to divide them up as well. For years they had puzzled over how to increase their revenue as their own incomes were declining, while the mine owners and the capitalists of Nuremberg appeared to be amassing huge wealth. In 1542—seized by “miserliness,” as Luther’s physician and later biographer Matthäus Ratzeberger put it—they had revoked all the temporary leases, one of which Luther’s father had held; now they wanted to run the mines themselves and turn the smelters into their employees.4 The Lutheran Albrecht had come up with the policy, but Luther was determined to protect the rights of the smelters, even attempting to get the count’s overlord, Duke Moritz of Saxony, to intervene. It was all caused by jealousy, Luther argued, “because whoever has something, has many people who envy them.” Once again, he took things personally: The Devil was behind the plan, as Luther’s enemies wanted to see the whole country reduced to poverty, “so that they could boast: look how God curses all those who support the gospel and lets them fall into ruin, and as a sign, [Luther’s] own fatherland has been utterly ruined.”5 Despite serious illness, therefore, Luther had traveled to Mansfeld in October 1545 to stop the scheme from going ahead.6 He failed, and in the end he was proved right: The counts’ experiment in running the mines was a disaster. By the 1560s they were bankrupt and the fabled wealth from the Mansfeld mines was gone, turning the town into a backwater.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Surprisingly, the theses make no mention of indulgences and they once again expound a theology rather than deducing an argument from propositions. The themes of Luther’s thought were moving well beyond what he had set out in the Ninety-five Theses, and the full implications of his attack on “philosophy” were becoming evident. 7 At the meeting in Heidelberg on April 25, 1518, Luther’s theses were presented in front of Bernhard von Usingen and Jodokus Trutfetter, his former teachers in philosophy. Trutfetter was one of the leading logicians of his day, whose Summulae had synthesized all the latest thinking about modal logic—that is, logic that considers not only what is actually the case, but also what is possible. Trutfetter’s textbook, printed at Wittenberg, presented sequences of binding syllogisms, or logically valid arguments, in visual, tabular form, making them a powerful tool with which not only to understand thought itself but also to overwhelm an opponent in debate. Luther reported to Spalatin that everyone had been persuaded by his disputation—except one newly minted doctor, who had exclaimed, much to the hilarity of the audience, that “if the peasants heard this, they would stone you to death.” And except for Usingen and Trutfetter. As Luther noted later, his former teachers were revolted “to death” by his views. In fact, when he left Heidelberg after the meeting, Usingen had joined him in his wagon, and during their journey to Erfurt, Luther had tried to bring him around. But there was no budging either of them, and now, he told Spalatin on May 18, he was going to leave them behind, just as Christ had left behind the Jews—a mean-spirited equation. 8 Luther had already confronted his former teachers with his views about scholasticism in February 1517, 9 and it could hardly have been pleasant for a senior member of the order to have their traveling companion harangue them about the emptiness of philosophy. Breaking his journey back to Wittenberg at Erfurt, Luther then turned up at Trutfetter’s door on May 8, determined to reply in person to a critical letter his old teacher had sent. 10 When his servant refused to allow him in, claiming his master was too ill, Luther wrote instead. He began by assuring his former teacher that he would never shame him with “biting and insulting letters” as “you fear I might.” But he went on to explain that “I simply believe that it is impossible to reform the Church if we do not root out the canons, the decretals, scholastic philosophy, logic as we have it now,” and replace them with study of the Bible and the Church Fathers. He rejected the allegation, as he had previously done to Lang, that he had been responsible for burning copies of Tetzel’s pamphlets, a dangerous insinuation that made him look like a violent rabble-rouser who did not respect other scholars.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  50 The rulers of this age are in apostasy from Islam. They were raised at the tables of imperialism, be it Crusaderism, or Communism or Zionism. They carry nothing from Islam but their names, even though they pray and fast and claim to be Muslims. 51 The students who had occupied the Saladin Mosque in 1980 had also compared Sadat to the Mongol rulers. Faraj’s ideas do not seem to have been confined to a small group of extremists. By the 1980s, they were in the air and were widely discussed. Faraj admitted that in Islamic law, jihad had been defined as a collective duty. It was not up to an individual to wage a holy war, but was a decision that could only be taken by the community as a whole. But, Faraj insisted, this law only applied when the ummah was under attack from external enemies. The situation today was far more serious, because the infidels had actually taken over in Egypt. Jihad , therefore, had become a duty for every single Muslim who was capable of fighting. 52 The whole complex tradition of Islam had thus narrowed to a single point: the only way to be a good Muslim in Sadat’s Egypt was to take part in a violent holy war against the regime. Faraj answered questions that were troubling his young disciples. Even though they were planning an assassination, Jihad members wanted to behave as morally as possible. Was it acceptable to tell lies in order to conceal their plans? What about the possibility of killing innocent bystanders as well as the guilty rulers? In Egypt, where family authority is very important, younger members wanted to know if it was all right to take part in the conspiracy without asking their parents’ permission. 53 There was obviously concern about undertaking a jihad against Sadat before Jerusalem had been liberated from Israel: which should take priority? Faraj replied that the jihad for Jerusalem should be led only by a devout Muslim leader, not by an infidel. He also revealed a fatal confidence in God’s direct intervention. Once a truly Islamic state had been established, Jerusalem would automatically revert to Muslim rule. 54 God had promised in the Koran that if Muslims fought the unbelievers, “God will chastise them by your hands, and will bring disgrace upon them, and will succour you against them.” 55 From a literal reading of this text, Faraj concluded that if Muslims took the initiative, God “will then intervene [and change] the laws of nature.” Could militants expect miraculous help? Faraj tragically answered “yes.” 56 Observers were puzzled that there was no follow-up to Sadat’s assassination. The conspirators seem to have made no plans for a coup, nor did they try to orchestrate a general uprising. The reason for this was probably their confidence in divine intervention after Muslims had taken the first step, by killing the president.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  This was most graphically expressed in the depiction of the United States as the Great Satan. Rightly or wrongly, many believed that if he had not been so warmly supported by the United States, the shah would not have behaved as he did. They knew that Americans were proud of their secular polity, which deliberately separated religion from the state; they had learned that many Westerners thought it praiseworthy and necessary to focus exclusively on the zahir . The result, as far as they could see, was the empty, hedonistic nightlife of North Tehran. Iranians were aware that many Americans were religious, but their faith seemed to make no sense. The “inside” and “outside” of Jimmy Carter were not “the same.” They could not understand how the President could continue to support a ruler who by 1978 had started to murder his own people. “We didn’t expect Carter to defend the shah, for he is a religious man who has raised the slogan of defending human rights,” Ayatollah Husain Montazeri told an interviewer after the Revolution. “How can Carter, the devout Christian, defend the shah?” 61 When Carter visited the shah on New Year’s Eve, during the sacred month of Muharram, to boost his regime, he could not, if he had tried, have cast himself more perfectly as the villain. During the next turbulent year, the United States came to seem the ultimate cause of Iran’s spiritual, economic, and political problems. Street graffiti identified Carter with Yazid, and the shah with Shimr, the general dispatched by Yazid to massacre Husain and his little army. In one series of street drawings, Khomeini was depicted as Moses, the shah as Pharaoh, while Carter was the idol adored by the Pharaoh/shah. 62 America, it was thought, had corrupted the shah and Khomeini, now increasingly bathed in a Shii light, came to stand as an Islamic alternative to the present unholy dictatorship. At the end of Muharram 1978, the shah yet again cast himself as the enemy of the Shiah. On January 8, the semiofficial newspaper Ettelaat published a slanderous article about Khomeini, calling him “an adventurer, without faith, and tied to the centers of colonialism.” He had led a dissolute life, the article averred, had been a British spy, and was even now in the pay of the British, who wanted to undermine the White Revolution. 63 This scurrilous and preposterous attack was a fatal mistake on the part of the shah.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He had been spoiling for a fight with the great humanist for years. In 1522 he had written disparagingly about his views on predestination in a letter: “Erasmus is not to be feared either in this or in almost any other really important subject that pertains to Christian doctrine….I know what is in this man just as I know the plots of Satan.”41 The letter passed from hand to hand, as Luther knew it would, and soon reached the man himself, wounding him greatly. Finally, in late 1524, Erasmus rose to the bait and published A Discussion or Discourse Concerning Free Will, which he apparently dashed off in just five days. In the months after Luther’s wedding, the struggle with Erasmus preoccupied Luther so intensely that, having attacked Karlstadt in Against the Heavenly Prophets, he neglected the controversy about the sacrament, much to the concern of his Strasbourg friend Nikolaus Gerbel, who complained that Luther should be concentrating his fire on the sacramentarians.42 [image "BAL5531 Portrait of Erasmus, 1523 (oil and egg tempera on panel) by Holbein the Younger, Hans (1497/8-1543); 74.5x52.5 cm; Private Collection; (add.info.: Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536); humanist scholar and philosopher; on loan to the National Gallery, London from the collection of the Earl of Radnor;); German, out of copyright" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_056_r1.jpg] [image "BAL5531 Portrait of Erasmus, 1523 (oil and egg tempera on panel) by Holbein the Younger, Hans (1497/8-1543); 74.5x52.5 cm; Private Collection; (add.info.: Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536); humanist scholar and philosopher; on loan to the National Gallery, London from the collection of the Earl of Radnor;); German, out of copyright" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_056_r1.jpg] 47. Portrait of Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1523. The battle with Erasmus marked the final parting of the ways between the Reformation and humanism. Erasmus had been a great influence on Luther: His letters are dotted with aphorisms taken from Erasmus’s Adages, which he must have known by heart. Now Erasmus the “eel” became the “viper.”43

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Catherine’s, where his congregation included many poor cloth-workers, with whom he quickly established a rapport. Here he also got to know the later “Zwickau prophets.” Although their theologies may have been different—Nikolaus Storch seems to have been a follower of the Free Spirit heresy—there were also points of contact and influence. But all was not plain sailing in Zwickau: Müntzer also became a target of hostility. The windows of his lodgings were smashed and he received a broadsheet of threats and abuse. Some of the reasons may emerge from a letter by Luther’s supporter Johann Agricola, in which he tried to get Müntzer to moderate his tone in sermons: “when you ought to be teaching what is right you impugn others in an unjustified way and even mention them by name,” adding, in large letters “ YOU BREATHE OUT NOTHING BUT SLAUGHTER AND BLOOD .” 22 Müntzer also began preaching against Egranus, whose theology he found lacking in seriousness—Luther and Agricola would eventually agree—and Egranus replied in kind. As a result, the town council banished both preachers, appointing Nikolaus Hausmann, a close follower of Luther and a steadier head, in their place. Müntzer decided to go to Prague in June 1521, and by this time he seems to have been convinced of the imminent end of the world and his own martyrdom. His apocalyptic mood is evident in his Prague Manifesto, a diatribe against the clergy and a statement of mystical theology; one version of it he wrote down on a piece of paper three feet square, as if he intended to publish his own colossal version of the Ninety-five Theses. 23 Returning from Prague in December 1521, he again took a series of temporary posts until he finally managed to find a position as preacher at Allstedt in April 1523. Here, like Karlstadt, he set about introducing a thoroughgoing Reformation, and even established a printing press. Allstedt was a tiny market town some thirty miles northeast of Erfurt, in an enclave of electoral Saxony, controlled by Duke Johann, the Elector’s brother, but surrounded by hostile Catholic territories. Enough was known about Müntzer’s radical views by this time for the duke and Spalatin to take an interest in the new preacher, and in late 1523 they visited the town, staying in the castle. Yet at this juncture the Saxon authorities, always cautious and slow moving, took no further action. It seems that Duke Johann was reluctant to take measures against Müntzer, well aware of his local support and not wishing to repress evangelical preaching.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Ill and weak, he knew that travel was putting his life at risk but he was determined to go because the counts of Mansfeld wanted him to settle a dispute between them: Albrecht was at loggerheads with his brother Gebhard, while Counts Ernst and Johann Georg had fallen out with him over the administration of the mines. Although Luther had rejected his father’s plans for him, he had never relinquished his obligations to protect the family business. 1 The copper and silver mining, “given by God, so that there is nothing like it in all Germany,” and once so thriving, was in chaotic decline. 2 Mansfeld had been a boom town, its fabulous riches paying for the three Renaissance castles towering up on the hill. The five counts had divided responsibilities for the territory, and not surprisingly this had led to bitter disputes. Albrecht and Gebhard were doughty supporters of Luther, as were the new counts, Philip and Johann Georg, but the old counts Hoyer, Günter, and Ernst had been Catholics, so the chapel had two entrances, one for the Lutherans, the other for the Catholic counts. The old count Ernst had used his patronage rights over St. Andreas Church in Eisleben to appoint Luther’s bitter enemy Georg Witzel as pastor, while Albrecht had appointed Caspar Güttel, one of Luther’s early associates, as preacher; one can only wonder what the congregation made of this. 3 The counts had run the mines collectively until 1536, when Albrecht persuaded the others to divide them up as well. For years they had puzzled over how to increase their revenue as their own incomes were declining, while the mine owners and the capitalists of Nuremberg appeared to be amassing huge wealth. In 1542—seized by “miserliness,” as Luther’s physician and later biographer Matthäus Ratzeberger put it—they had revoked all the temporary leases, one of which Luther’s father had held; now they wanted to run the mines themselves and turn the smelters into their employees. 4 The Lutheran Albrecht had come up with the policy, but Luther was determined to protect the rights of the smelters, even attempting to get the count’s overlord, Duke Moritz of Saxony, to intervene. It was all caused by jealousy, Luther argued, “because whoever has something, has many people who envy them.” Once again, he took things personally: The Devil was behind the plan, as Luther’s enemies wanted to see the whole country reduced to poverty, “so that they could boast: look how God curses all those who support the gospel and lets them fall into ruin, and as a sign, [Luther’s] own fatherland has been utterly ruined.” 5 Despite serious illness, therefore, Luther had traveled to Mansfeld in October 1545 to stop the scheme from going ahead. 6 He failed, and in the end he was proved right: The counts’ experiment in running the mines was a disaster.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The later Luther is not necessarily the best interpreter of his younger self, especially since he rejected monasticism so vehemently. It is worth noting, however, that as he looked back on his life as a monk his views always focused on the same triad: In monasticism, he argued, consciences were burdened by endless religious duties; Christ was perceived as a judge; and Mary became an intercessor with Christ. Replacing Christ with Mary, in particular, distorted the true message of Christianity. As monks, Luther preached in 1523, “We believed that Christ sat in heaven in judgement, not caring about us on earth, but that he would only give us life after death (even if we had done good deeds) if the Mother had reconciled him with us….Therefore I wish that the Ave Maria would be completely rooted out because of this abuse.”23 Moreover the pictures of God sitting in judgment that decorated medieval churches “painted how the Son fell before the Father and showed him his wounds, and St. John and Mary prayed to Christ for us at the Last Judgment, and Mary pointed Jesus to her breasts, at which he had sucked.” Such images should be removed, “because they made people imagine that they should fear our dear Savior, as if he wanted to drive us away from him and as if he would punish our sin.”24 His later anti-asceticism was closely linked with this passionate rejection of both Marianism and his own monkishness. “When I was a papist, I was ashamed to utter Christ’s name,” he recalled. “I thought: Jesus is a womanish name.”25 To the later Luther, his youthful revolt against his father had been a retreat from manhood, into a matriarchal world populated with female religious figures and a false, perverted religiosity.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther knew what was afoot politically. He assured the Elector that he would enter Wittenberg, just as he would enter Leipzig, “even if (Your Electoral Grace will excuse my foolish words) it rained Duke Georgs for nine days and every duke were nine times as furious as this one.” He was aware that Duke Georg was behind the imperial mandate, and that electoral Saxony’s interests were directly at risk. He warned the Elector not to protect him: “I am going to Wittenberg under a far higher protection than the Elector’s. I have no intention of asking Your Electoral Grace for protection. Indeed I think I shall protect Your Electoral Grace more than you are able to protect me. And if I thought that Your Electoral Grace could and would protect me, I should not go. And since I have the impression that Your Electoral Grace is still quite weak in faith, I can by no means regard Your Electoral Grace as the man to protect and save me.”49 In a postscript he offered to write any letter the Elector would like, to make it clear that it was his wish alone to return to Wittenberg. Luther later remarked that this was the harshest letter he had written to any prince. And yet it marked a complete capitulation to the Elector’s point of view. Up to mid-January 1522, Luther appeared to have been very satisfied with how the Reformation was proceeding in Wittenberg. “Everything else that I see and hear pleases me very much. May the Lord strengthen the spirit of those who want to do right,” he had written to Spalatin in early December, even though he knew that there had been disturbances in the city church the day before he reached Wittenberg. As late as January 13, he had congratulated Karlstadt on his forthcoming wedding.50 He had not condemned the removal of images, the abolition of private Masses, the institution of Communion in both kinds, or even the rejection of the adoration of the sacrament. Yet now he returned to Wittenberg, supporting the Elector and Spalatin in their wish to reverse all innovations in line with the imperial mandate.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  If he were to allege that he was being prevented from debating, he should be asked why he didn’t engage in debating and arguing at Wittenberg, fulfilling the duties of his university office. WB 3, 774, early September 1524: Luther seems determined not to allow it to appear as if Karlstadt had been given permission to publish. Instead he stuck to his view that the exchange was a declaration of enmity, writing in Against the Heavenly Prophets, Part 1 of late December 1524, “Dr. Andreas Karlstadt has deserted us, and on top of that has become our worst enemy”; LW 40, 79; WS 18, 62:6–7. 8. WB 3, 785, Oct. 27, 1524. Reinhard was ordered to leave Jena; Luther told Amsdorf that he had begged in the church for money, weeping; WB 3, 811, Dec. 29, 1524; Luther, who did not trust Reinhard, wanted him expelled from Nuremberg. 9. Furcha, ed. and trans., Carlstadt, 161–62; Karlstadt, Was gesagt ist, fo. F i (r). 10. Sider, Karlstadt, 174–97; the legality of Karlstadt’s calling was bitterly disputed by Luther. See also Barge, Karlstadt, II, 95–143. 11. Furcha, ed. and trans., Carlstadt, 369–70; Karlstadt, Anzeyg, fo. F (r). LW 40, 117; WS 18, 100:27–29. 12. Barge, Karlstadt, II, 97; Sider, Karlstadt, 183–87; he paid people to pick grapes and employed others to make hay. 13. WB 3, 818, Jan. 18, 1525. 14. WB 3, 702, Jan. 18, 1524; 720, March 14, 1524, where he repeated the joke. 15. Furcha, ed. and trans., Carlstadt, 134; Karlstadt, Was gesagt ist, fo. A ii (r). 16. In his Latin liturgy for the Mass of 1523, however, Luther reinstituted Communion in both kinds; WS 12, 197–220; 217. This still stuck quite closely to the format of the Mass, retained the elevation, kept the words of institution in Latin, and involved a good deal of chant, including of the gospel. The use of incense and the lighting of candles when the gospel was read was permitted. Luther did not institute a German Mass until 1526. 17. LW 40, 116; WS 18, 99:20–21. 18. Although Luther attacked Karlstadt for taking on a parish where he had no calling, Karlstadt had in fact been careful to gain the duke’s approval, and the congregation had also formally called him. 19. WB 3, 818, Jan. 18, 1525 (Glatz to Luther). 20. It was even said that he had been introduced to Tauler’s sermons by the pastor Conrad Glitsch’s cook, a pious woman who had had a following in Leipzig. Whether true or not, the rumor indicates the reputation of the Theologia deutsch and German mysticism as appealing to simple folk. Bubenheimer, Müntzer, 181–82. The Nuremberg Lutheran pastor Martin Glaser, who noted this in his copy of Tauler, given to him by Luther, in 1529, said that Müntzer and Karlstadt were misled by Tauler and spread their error in Orlamünde, an interesting attempt by a Lutheran to blame Müntzer’s and Karlstadt’s radicalism on their appropriation of German mysticism. 21.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The Nestorians insisted on the absolute separation of divine and human nature in the person of Jesus Christ. The sacramentarians’ starting point was that there was a fundamental division between things of the flesh and things of the spirit, hence their view that Christ’s body could not be both in heaven and in the Host; but insisting that the sacrament was a spiritual event was not to deny the humanity of Christ. Luther was prepared to make the accusation because by this stage too sharp a distinction between flesh and spirit seemed to him to undermine the Real Presence, a doctrine that was starting to take on the status of a totemic truth. He went still further in his Admonition to Prayer Against the Turks in 1541, where he listed the followers of Müntzer and Zwingli and the Anabaptists in the same breath as “cursedly evil sects and heresies.”31 Then, in 1544, he lost all restraint in A Brief Confession of Dr. Martin Luther on the Holy Sacrament, in which he called Zwingli a “heathen” whose beliefs about the sacrament meant that “the salvation of his soul must be doubted.”32 The work began with Luther invoking his own impending death—“I, who am now going towards my grave”—and it enshrined his insulting treatment of Zwingli within a major doctrinal writing, as his testament. The Zwinglians then published Luther’s confession alongside their own statement of faith concerning the sacrament, and so began another unseemly pamphlet war between the sacramentarians and the Lutherans.33 By the time Luther died in 1546, it looked as if the Protestants were hopelessly divided, their antagonisms more bitter than ever.34 —LUTHER kept on attacking the sacramentarian position despite the political need for their support because it struck at the heart of a theology that was slowly coalescing into a Church; he was no longer, it seemed, interested in reforming the whole of Christianity, but rather saw it in local terms only. As a result, he was less and less interested in compromise, and more determined to protect doctrinal purity in accordance with his own beliefs. He and Melanchthon had been closely involved with setting up the evangelical Church in electoral Saxony with the Elector’s support, and Luther was now more focused on protecting the purity of this creation.35

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  [image "41. This woodcut shows Karlstadt and Luther on either side of a wagon in which Christ sits, driving toward salvation, while Ulrich von Hutten in armor leads the chained clergy of the old church, Murner visible as a cat. Luther and Karlstadt both hold palms of salvation, but Karlstadt is almost more prominent than Luther. The woodcut is reminiscent of Karlstadt’s Wagon, illustrated by Cranach, the first visual propaganda for the Reformation (see ). It folds out of a pamphlet by Hermann von dem Busche, Trivphvs veritatis. Sick der warheyt, a long poem in praise of the Reformation published in Speyer in 1524." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_048_r1.jpg] [image "41. This woodcut shows Karlstadt and Luther on either side of a wagon in which Christ sits, driving toward salvation, while Ulrich von Hutten in armor leads the chained clergy of the old church, Murner visible as a cat. Luther and Karlstadt both hold palms of salvation, but Karlstadt is almost more prominent than Luther. The woodcut is reminiscent of Karlstadt’s Wagon, illustrated by Cranach, the first visual propaganda for the Reformation (see ). It folds out of a pamphlet by Hermann von dem Busche, Trivphvs veritatis. Sick der warheyt, a long poem in praise of the Reformation published in Speyer in 1524." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_048_r1.jpg] 41. This woodcut shows Karlstadt and Luther on either side of a wagon in which Christ sits, driving toward salvation, while Ulrich von Hutten in armor leads the chained clergy of the old church, Murner visible as a cat. Luther and Karlstadt both hold palms of salvation, but Karlstadt is almost more prominent than Luther. The woodcut is reminiscent of Karlstadt’s Wagon, illustrated by Cranach, the first visual propaganda for the Reformation (see this page). It folds out of a pamphlet by Hermann von dem Busche, Trivphvs veritatis. Sick der warheyt, a long poem in praise of the Reformation published in Speyer in 1524. [image "11. T he Black Bear Inn" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_049_r1.jpg] [image "11. T he Black Bear Inn" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_049_r1.jpg] AT 7 A.M. on August 22, 1524, Luther preached in the main church of Jena. It was a memorable sermon, lasting an hour and a half. Luther was at his most pugilistic and roundly attacked those who questioned the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He also condemned the radicals who insisted on removing all images from churches. Such people, Luther said, were driven by the spirit of Satan, and though they were few in number, their presence as sectaries was a sign that the Devil was raging.1

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  15. Goetz, Anabaptists, 124–26; WS 26, Von der Wiedertaufe, 145:22–23, WB 6, 1881, end Oct. 1531, 222–23: Melanchthon advised executing not just the leaders, but ordinary Anabaptists insofar as they were not just acting out of ignorance, a much harsher stance than in Hesse at the same time. Luther agreed to the memorial, adding the remarks in his own hand (223:1–3); on the development of Melanchthon’s views, see Oyer, Lutheran Reformers, 140–78; and Kusukawa, Transformation, which links Melanchthon’s harshness to the identity crisis he experienced during the Wittenberg unrest, 78–79. 16. Erbe scratched his name into the wall of the tower where he was held, discovered centuries later during renovations of the castle. See Hill, Baptism, 81–82. Luther also knew the case of Georg Karg, imprisoned for his Anabaptist views in the Wittenberg Castle in the room where the Elector had learned to fence; WB 8, 3206, see “Vor und Nachgeschichte” (Jan. 3, 1537); Luther had at first tried to have him confined in his own house but the Saxon government refused. Karg had entered into a spiritual union with the wife of the spiritualist and radical Sebastian Franck. Luther instructed him and he accepted correction; he was released in mid-February. 17. It numbered between 8,000 and 9,000 at the start of the sixteenth century; Dülmen, Reformation als Revolution, 238; an estimated 2,500 Anabaptists arrived in the town (275). 18. He took over from Jan Matthys, who was regarded as a prophet and had established community of goods in the town: Dülmen, Reformation als Revolution, 208–336; Kerssenbrock, Anabaptist Madness (ed. and trans. Mackay). 19. See Newe zeytung von den Wydertaufferen zu Münster, Nuremberg, 1535 [VD 16 N 876], which included a preface by Luther and propositions against the Anabaptists by Melanchthon; Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, “Münster and the Anabaptists,” in Hsia, ed., German People. 20. WT 5, 6041. Part of the reason for polygamy may also have been that with the town’s menfolk decimated, the women left behind needed to be organized into households under male headship; see Hsia, “Münster and the Anabaptists.” 21. Greschat, Bucer, 96. 22. WB 6, Jan. 22, 1531, 24–25:40–44.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Most brawls took place in taverns or drinking shops. 33 Luther’s own uncle, “Little Hans,” a wastrel who went from one pub brawl to another, would meet his death in a fracas at a drinking house in 1536. 34 People used whatever was to hand, grabbing the tavern lamps to bash an opponent, or hoisting the beer jugs to buffet an opponent about the head. Representing comradeship, these jugs also had symbolic significance: One man would insult another as not worthy to share a jug with a respectable man. 35 Drinking was surrounded with bonding rituals and there were competitive drinking games where a man had to stand his ground. One favorite required the use of the “pass glass,” ridged with bands separated by different widths, from which the drinker had to down his tipple exactly to the next ridge; the Luder family owned at least one of these. In such a pugilistic culture, insults were routine. One man might taunt another: “If you were born of a pious [that is, chaste] woman, come out and fight, but if you were born of a rogue, stay indoors.” There was little chivalry in the taverns. A man would tell a woman to go hang out with the priests and monks in Hettstedt “as she had doubtless done before.” “There are no more than two or three pious women in the whole of Mansfeld,” another man announced angrily. He stayed pointedly silent when his companion asked him whether he included his wife in that number. 36 Work disputes could rapidly descend into arguments about an individual’s sexual, moral, and social behavior because honor, the central social category, was both sexual and economic. During Luther’s childhood, Hans Luder would have been a force to be reckoned with. He was a physically powerful man, and once, when a pub fight broke out in his presence, he poured beer over the two combatants to separate them, clouting both on the head for good measure with a jug until the blood ran. 37 He was also not a man to be crossed lightly. We find him complaining about the high charges of the winch-winders, and about another mine operator who, he claimed, was stealing his ore (the accused countered that Luder was taking his charcoal). 38 The court books are littered with disputes between the mine operators—small wonder, with 194 shafts at the industry’s peak in the early sixteenth century in the Mansfeld and Eisleben areas, where it could be hard to know where one mine’s territory began and another ended. Time and again, the mine inspector would be called to check the location of boundary stones. Tunnels honeycombed the hills. The longest was a remarkable eight miles long, and it was rumored that a man could reach Eisleben from the castle in Mansfeld through the tunnels.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Karlstadt had scorned this apparent sensitivity to “weak consciences,” people not yet prepared for the Reformation, which he regarded as nothing but a fig leaf for political compromise, designed to protect the Reformation in the light of the imperial mandate. At Orlamünde he picked up where he had left off in Wittenberg, introducing Communion in both kinds, singing psalms in German, removing images, and emphasizing the priesthood of all believers, just as he encouraged his parishioners to interpret the Bible for themselves. 55 But if the Eucharistic dispute began life as a set of practical issues, it soon became much more far-reaching and fundamental. While Karlstadt had at first angrily rejected complaints from Nuremberg that the Wittenbergers were denying the Real Presence in the sacrament, he gradually developed a theology that saw Communion as a “heartfelt remembrance,” a memorial act only. By 1524 he was clearly arguing that “This is my body” could not be used to prove that Christ was corporeally present, because “this” did not refer to the bread but to Christ’s body. The point of Communion was to reawaken the believer’s emotional connection to Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. 56 At about the same time, the leading Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli in Zurich, who would become extremely influential in the southern cities of the empire, was developing a similar view from slightly different arguments. Whereas Karlstadt argued that when Christ said “This is my body” he referred only to his physical body, Zwingli concentrated on what was meant by “is,” arguing that it meant “signifies.” Karlstadt’s road to this position was directly connected to his totemic emphasis on suffering—by which one gave up all “lusts,” emptied oneself for God, and arrived at Gelassenheit . 57 As a Christian, he wrote in On the Manifold, Singular Will of God, you “must feel a cross in your life, work, labor and resting if you intend to be in Christ. And you must die to self-will.” Although he was now married, his writings continued to display awkwardness about sexuality, defensively arguing that it was all right to be with a woman, if there were no “lust” involved. He wrote of how “the flesh gnaws at us with its desires,” warning, “If we develop pleasure and love of our own flesh and desires and establish friendship with our nature, our hostile flesh is like a beam in our eyes.” This convoluted position sprang from his radical separation of flesh and spirit, a dualism that marked his entire theological output, and determined his mature Eucharistic theology. He distinguished between the “inner” reception of the sacrament and its “outer” material form, the bread, and because he was emphatic that only the spiritual dimension mattered, he was drawn to argue that the divine could not be inherent in material objects. 58 Karlstadt’s Eucharistic theology also informed his views on morals, gender, and politics.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He remonstrated with Staupitz for writing that Luther’s works were “praised by those who patronize brothels, and that my recent writings have given great offense.” “My Father,” he continued, “I must destroy that kingdom of abomination and perdition which belongs to the Pope, together with all his hangers-on.” 18 More than a year later, on September 17, 1523, with the Augustinian order unraveling as monk after monk left the monastic life, he wrote to Staupitz for the last time, interceding for a brother who had left Staupitz’s monastery in Salzburg, “now a free man in Christ,” and who needed financial support from “the great wealth of your monastery.” Once again, Luther began by upbraiding Staupitz for his silence, assuring him that “even if I have lost your favor and goodwill, it would not be right for me to forget you or to be ungrateful to you, for it was through you that the light of the gospel first began to shine out of the darkness into my heart.” He was disappointed that Staupitz had aligned himself with the “infamous monster” that is Cardinal Lang. Alternating with praise and imprecation, Luther pleads with Staupitz: “I shall certainly not cease wishing and praying that you will be turned away from your cardinal and the papacy as I am, and as certainly you yourself once were.” He signed the letter “your son.” 19 But there was to be no reconciliation. Staupitz died on December 28, 1524, and in January Luther wrote to Amsdorf, Staupitz’s nephew: “Staupitz has departed this life, having enjoyed only a little time in his position of power”—another dig at his becoming abbot. 20 Linck, Staupitz’s grateful protégé, decided to publish his last sermons posthumously but Luther took no part in it. His judgment about his former confessor’s preaching was acid: “it’s rather cold, just as he always was, and not vehement enough.” He added faint praise: “It’s not unworthy of seeing the light of day, since so many monstrosities are produced and sold these days.” 21 Luther had outgrown yet another father figure. There would be no new ones; instead, Luther himself would now act as a father to his many acolytes at Wittenberg. This can be seen in the way he endlessly fussed over Melanchthon, recently appointed to the chair of Greek at Wittenberg, worrying about his health and chivvying him to marry. Luther acknowledged that Melanchthon was the better Greek scholar and he was delighted to have won him for the university. It would not be long before Melanchthon’s lectures attracted a larger audience than Luther’s.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  There could be no possibility of reconciliation, because the State of Israel was the creation of Satan. As Teitelbaum explained, it was not possible for a Jew “to adhere to both faith in the state and faith in our holy Torah, for they are complete opposites.” Even if the politicians and cabinet ministers were Talmudic sages and devout observers of the commandments, the state would still be a demonic profanity because it had rebelled against God and tried to snatch salvation and to advance the End of Days. 18 Neturei Karta had no time for Agudat’s efforts to get religious legislation passed in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. It was not a pious act to try to limit public transport on the Sabbath by law or to ensure that yeshiva students were exempt from the draft. This was simply converting a divine law into human law; it amounted to an annulment of the Torah and to a desecration of the Halakhah. As Rabbi Shimon Israel Posen, a leading scholar of the community of Satmar Hasidim in New York, said of the Agudat members of the Knesset: Woe unto them for the shame of it, that people who put on phylacteries every day sit in that assembly of the wicked called the “Knesset” and, signing their names to falsehoods, forge the signature of the Holy One, blessed be He, heaven forfend. For they think that they can decide by majority vote whether the Torah of truth will be trampled upon even further or whether God’s Torah will be granted authority. 19 Yet even the Neturei Karta felt the attraction of Zionism. Blau’s description of the Zionists as “seducers” is significant. A Jewish state in a Jewish land is a temptation that tugs hard at the Jewish soul. This is part of the fundamentalists’ dilemma. They often feel fascinated and drawn toward the very modern achievements from which they recoil in horror. 20 The Protestant fundamentalists’ portrayal of Antichrist, the charming, plausible deceiver, shows something of the same conflict. There is a tension in the fundamentalist vision of modernity that can be explosive. As Blau indicated, the piety of the anti-Zionists is one of principled “hatred” and hatred often goes hand-in-hand with unacknowledged love. Haredim feel rage when they contemplate the State of Israel. They do not kill, but to this day they throw stones at cars in Israel whose drivers break the law by traveling on the Sabbath. Sometimes they will attack the house of a fellow Haredi who has failed to live up to the expected standard by, say, owning a television set or permitting his wife to dress immodestly. Such acts of violence are seen as kiddush hashem , “sanctification of God’s Name,” and a blow against the forces of evil that surround the Haredim on all sides and threaten to devour them.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  The sect declared that this jahili society must be destroyed and a truly Muslim society based on the Koran and the Sunnah built on its ruins. God had chosen Shukri Mustafa, the founder of the sect, to create a new law and to put Muslim history back on the straight path. 31 Shukri had been arrested and imprisoned by Nasser’s regime in 1965, when he was twenty-three years old, for distributing the leaflets of the Society of Muslim Brothers. 32 For this paltry offense, he had spent six years in Nasser’s camps, reading Mawdudi and Qutb, and, like many of the younger Brothers, he was drawn to their ideas. In the prisons, these more extreme Muslims practiced the strict segregation demanded by Qutb. They withdrew from the other inmates and the older, more moderate Brothers, declaring that they were jahili . Some, however, decided to keep their views secret. Qutb had believed that it would be a long time before his vanguard were ready to begin a jihad against jahili society. First they must go through the first three stages of the Muhammadan program, and prepare themselves spiritually. Some of the young extremists in the prisons, therefore, agreed that they were currently in a state of “weakness” and in no position to challenge the evil regime. For the time being they would continue to live a normal life in the jahiliyyah until the time was ripe. Shukri, however, belonged to the more ardent group which advocated “total separation” (mufsalah kamilah): anybody who did not join their sect was an infidel and true believers could have nothing to do with him. They would refuse to speak to their fellow prisoners, and there were frequent fistfights. 33 When Shukri was released from the Abu Zabal camp on October 16, 1971, he founded a new group which he called the Society of Muslims. Members were convinced that they were Qutb’s vanguard and dedicated themselves to fulfilling his program. Accordingly, they withdrew from mainstream society to prepare for the jihad . Since the whole of Egyptian society was corrupt, they refused to worship in the mosques and pronounced the edict of excommunication (takfir) upon the religious and secularist establishment alike. Some migrated to the deserts and mountain caves around Asyut, Shukri’s hometown. Most lived in furnished rooms in the poorest and most deprived neighborhoods on the outskirts of the large cities, where they tried to live a truly Islamic life. By 1976, the Society of Muslims had about two thousand members, men and women, who were convinced that God had chosen them to build a pure ummah on the ruins of the present jahiliyyah .

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  By arguing that Christians could not earn their way out of Purgatory through good works, viewing relics, or acquiring indulgences, Luther was assaulting the medieval Church’s claim to be able to grant forgiveness and facilitate salvation through the dispensation of the sacraments. For him, such practices showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of sin, repentance, and salvation. The Protestant chronicler Friedrich Myconius later recorded that some of Luther’s parishioners had complained that he “would not absolve them, because they showed no true penitence nor reform” and had appeared with letters of indulgence from Tetzel as they “did not want to desist from adultery, whoredom, usury, unjust goods and such sins and evil.” 10 By attacking the understanding of penance, Luther was implicitly striking at the heart of the papal Church, and its entire financial and social edifice, which worked on a system of collective salvation that allowed people to pray for others and so reduce their time in Purgatory. It financed a whole clerical proletariat of priests paid to recite anniversary Masses for the souls of the deceased. It paid for pious laywomen in poorhouses who said prayers for the souls of the dead, to ease their path through Purgatory. It paid for brotherhoods that prayed for their members, said Masses, undertook processions, and financed special altars. In short, the system structured the religious and social lives of most medieval Christians. At its center was the Pope, who was the steward of a treasury of “merits”—grace that could be disbursed to others. Attacking indulgences, therefore, would sooner or later lead to a questioning of papal power. No one compelled people to buy indulgences, but there was a huge market for them. When the indulgence-sellers arrived at a town: the papal bull [the charter approving the indulgence, with the Pope’s lead seal affixed] would be carried about on a satin or golden cloth, and all the priests, monks, town council, schoolmaster, schoolboys, men, women, maidens and children all met it singing in procession with flags and candles. All the bells were rung, all the organs were played…[the indulgence-seller] was led into the churches and a red cross was erected in the middle of the church where the papal banner would be hung. 11 So efficiently organized was the system that the indulgences were even printed locally on parchment that could be filled in with the name of the person on whose behalf they were purchased. Part of the explosiveness of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses lay in the timing of their appearance. On the feast day of All Saints, the magnificent collection of relics belonging to the Elector Friedrich, ruler of Saxony and Luther’s sovereign, were displayed in Wittenberg’s Castle Church to pilgrims from miles around and indulgences granted to all who viewed them.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther, however, soon became convinced that Müntzer was dangerous, and his writings from the summer on are peppered with references to the “spirit of Allstedt.” In late July 1524, worried that the authorities were not intervening, he published his Letter to the Princes of Saxony Concerning the Rebellious Spirit.24 Luther reminded the worldly rulers that false sects have always attacked Christendom, and linked Müntzer with violence and rebellion. He also proclaimed that all those who destroy images are driven not by the “spirit,” as they claim, but by the Devil—an argument that implicitly bracketed Karlstadt with Müntzer. Luther did not name either man, referring only to the “spirit of Allstedt,” but the term could be seen to include Karlstadt’s theology. After all, both men prized Gelassenheit, although Müntzer, who knew the insecure life of a clerical proletarian, placed far more emphasis on suffering as part of the process through which the believer found God. Both had created godly parishes, removed images, and reformed the liturgy, and they had corresponded with each other. Karlstadt too had argued that the letter of Scripture was worthless without the spirit, and that academic theology was not the path to truth. As he had told Müntzer in 1522: “I have said more about visions and dreams than any of the professors.”25 These people, Luther argued, claim to be so spiritually superior, but they had not fought the Pope as he had. To underline the point, he provided a brief autobiography, including his debate at Leipzig and his appearances at Augsburg and Worms,26 presenting himself as the sole Reformation hero while obliterating Karlstadt altogether. The Allstedtian spirits were profiting from Luther’s victories “though they have done no battle for it and risked no bloodshed to attain it. But I have had to attain it for them and, until now, at the risk of my body and my life.”27 In a rhetorical tour de force, Luther here made the touchstone of truth his own physical existence, his preparedness to put his “body and life” on the line. He equated the evangelical movement with the narrative of his own deeds, even with his physical being. This had already been evident in the words attributed to him at Worms: “Here I stand”—his body implacably the guarantee of his truth and commitment. Karlstadt’s brush with danger, as Luther well knew, could hardly stand comparison with his own. Yet the “martyr’s crown” was important to both men. It had been the prospect of martyrdom that had impelled Karlstadt’s heightened understanding of Gelassenheit, and with it, the unfolding of his mystical theology. However, by “spirit”—so important to his understanding of how the Bible should be read—Karlstadt did not mean the spirit of violence, but the spirit of God with which the soul should seek union, through Gelassenheit, and in preparedness for martyrdom. No wonder Karlstadt was so angry by the time he met Luther at the Black Bear Inn.